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Chicago - United States physicians who identify themselves as religious are no more likely to care for poor, under-served patients than those who have no religious affiliation, researchers have found.
The study suggests doctors in the United States who see religion as a "master motive in their lives" are not more likely to care for the poor than others.
"Religious physicians are not disproportionately caring for the under-served," said Dr Farr Curlin, of the University of Chicago.
Dr Curlin, who considers himself religious, said he undertook the study because many religions include a call to serve the poor.
"I was curious about whether doctors who are more formed in their religious beliefs are more likely to take care of patients who are poor," said Dr Curlin, whose study appears in the Annals of Family Medicine.
He and colleagues at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut mailed surveys to 1820 practising doctors. Of those, 63 per cent responded.
The researchers ranked "intrinsic religiosity" according to how physicians answered questions about the role of religion as a motive in their lives.
Physicians also answered questions about how frequently they attended religious services, the extent they considered themselves to be spiritual, and whether they believed the practice of medicine was a calling.
What they found was physicians who were deemed more religious as reflected by intrinsic religiosity or frequency of attendance of religious services were not more likely to report caring for under-served patient populations - those that tended to be poor, uninsured or on Medicaid, the federal health programme for the poor.
- Reuters
